The Red Chamber Read Online Free PDF Page A

and plants carted here, basket by basket. Your great-aunt—may she rest in peace—was an Imperial Concubine. One year His Highness decreed that all the Palace Ladies might pay a visit to their families at New Year’s. We built the Garden for her.”
    Something about the way her uncle says “the Garden” strikes her, as if it were something known to everyone, like “the Great Wall” or “the Emperor.”
    “What’s the Garden?”
    Uncle Zheng shouts out the window to the bearers. “Go the long way around the mountain, so Miss Lin can see the Garden!”
    The sedan veers onto a path lined with low trees. She catches glimpses of ripening plums amid glossy dark leaves, and hears the rush of water. She looks up to see a small waterfall foaming down a wet black rock face. On her other side is a lake, purplish in the setting sun, with a nine-angled bridge leading to a pavilion. Near a grove of spotted bamboo, a snowy egret balances on one spindly leg and dips its beak into the water. “It’s beautiful, like a fairy kingdom!” she cries.
    Uncle Zheng points to a terra-cotta roof amid pine trees along theshore of the lake. “That’s Baochai’s place. That one near the arched bridge is Tanchun’s—”
    “My cousins live here?”
    “The Imperial Concubine decreed after her Visitation that the girls be allowed to live here so it wouldn’t lie empty. The girls and Baoyu, of course.” His mouth twists wryly. He looks at Daiyu kindly. “Who knows? Perhaps you’ll get to stay here as well. Wouldn’t you like that?”
    She does not answer. Her initial amazement is giving way to a sense of the strangeness of the place. She has visited the famous gardens in Suzhou: exquisite spaces, in which mounds of rock suggest mountains, mossy pools represent lakes, by their art evoking the broader sweep of nature. But this garden, in its attempt to duplicate natural wonders in their true scale, seems incongruous, as if a child’s toy has been enlarged to human size.
    Now the bearers lower the sedan again. This time her uncle steps out and leads her to a small gate with a roof curving upwards at the corners like water buffalo horns. Following him around a white marble screen, she passes into a spacious courtyard. At the far end is a large five-frame building with enameled red pillars. Her attention is caught by the birds. They hang in tiny bamboo cages along all four sides of the courtyard, dozens of them: parrots in every tropical color, cockatoos, “painted eyebrows,” thrushes, and finches. Some sit on perches, others cling to the bars of their cages. She wants to stop and look at them, but her uncle is already hurrying ahead.
    As they cross the courtyard towards the main apartment, a young woman darts out of a side door and intercepts them.
    “Here you are at last! We’ve been expecting you for the last hour. Welcome home, Uncle!” The young woman clasps her hands and bends the upper half of her body in a kowtow, but with a roguish smile, as if no one could seriously expect such formality from her.
    Daiyu stares at her. She has never in her life seen a person so exquisitely dressed, in silks as delicate and fluttering as a butterfly’s wings. She turns to Daiyu, her rouged lips parting in a smile.
    “And here’s my new little cousin.” She puts a beringed hand on Daiyu’s hair. “I’m Wang Xifeng. I’m married to your cousin Lian.” She pulls Daiyu up the steps into the main apartment. “Come in. Everyone is dying to see you.”
    Daiyu’s first impression is of a large, opulently furnished room filled with people, some of them sitting on the kang , some of them standingalong the walls, all of them as beautifully dressed as Wang Xifeng. She is wearing her rose-sprigged gown, the last thing her mother made for her before she fell ill. It is her favorite gown, but now she is conscious of how rumpled and stained it is from her journey.
    Her eyes fall first on a boy, about her own age, standing before the kang while an